Wolf People biographyWOLF PEOPLE began in 2005, when singer/guitarist Jack SHARP recorded a demo album named after the children's book Little Jacko And The Wolf People. SHARP filled out the lineup with Tom WATT on drums, Joe HOLLICK on guitar and Dan DAVIES on bass. Their music is a blend of psychedelic and blues, combined with inflences of folk, jazz and krautrock. The band has been favorably compared to CREAM, TRAFFIC, JETHRO TULL, CAPTAIN BEEFHEART, CAN PENTANGLE and AMON DUUL II.Wolf People official website-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wolf Peopleare an English psychedelic rock band based in London, Bedford and North Yorkshire. They formed in 2006 around the release of a very limited CD EP onSea Recordsas part of the Lifeboat Series. They then released three 7” singles onBattered Ornaments Records, they quickly sold out and are now becoming quite sought after. In fact, the 7″ vinyl “Cotton Strands” is taken from is completely out of print, so for now the digital version will have to suffice.The band have been embraced by the psych community receiving great praise in Shindig magazine and Terrascope.com amongst others. Their influences include Captain Beefheart, Can, Pentangle, Dungen, Amon Duul II. Wolf People’s music is largely blues rock based but incorporates elements of folk, jazz, kraut, and country.You can find several more of the band’s tracks on theirSoundcloud page-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------WOLF PEOPLE - TINY CIRCLE/MERCY II(45 from Battered Ornaments records)Originally scheduled for a March release, but put back when work on the sleeve design by Luke Insect was delayed, in the immortal words of the Croz, this single ‘has been a long time comin’!But it’s surely been worth the wait. Since the release of that 5-track CD EP late last year, which gathered up the band’s best recordings thus far, it’s been a pleasure to witness Wolf People’s subsequent progress as a live act. All the promise of that EP has found full bloom on this magnificent single.As band leader Jack Sharp says:‘the rhythm tracks we actually recorded in North London in the studio of a friend of ours, both tracks recorded in one day then overdubbed with guitars, flutes, vocals and harmonica at my house in Bedford and Joe’s place in Yorkshire. As normal the approach was to record everything we could think of, then whittle it down until we have something coherent. We’re very critical, there’s a lot of editing’.A recent entry on their myspace site suggests this is the first Wolf People proper record, as Sharp explains:‘what I mean by the first proper ‘Wolf People’ release is that it’s the first record where the whole band have worked together on every stage of the thing. It’s naturally evolved away from being a band that plays their version of my studio recordings into a band that writes and records together, a real band in the traditional sense, and I think we’re running out of these’. With its insistent heavy guitar/flute riff ‘Tiny Circle’ will immediately transport you back a few decades and put some of you in mind of vintage Black Widow or those Mancunian sons of Tull, Gravy Train during their Vertigo period. It draws you instantly in. You can see why this is the top side – it has a certain catchy appeal, and in amongst all the Ross Harris’s tootie flootering there’s some fine toothsome guitar blasts from Jack Sharp, and Joe Holick whose playing particularly on slide just seems to get better and better.However, it’s the flip, ‘Mercy II’ that carries the real lupine bite here – a dirty blues rave up with stuttering Magic Band rhythms (handled as ever with aplomb by Tom Watt, the group ‘s octopus-limbed drummer) and that tight driving beat that the band has made so much a part of its sound, this is a cracker – mysterious arcane lyrics, powerful bass guitar runs from Dan Davies and after the bridge, Sharp’s vocals get positively soulful especially when he repeatedly hollers ‘on this day’ as if his life depended upon it.All in all this is pure dark, lycanthropic magic! Yet as was written in the annals of yore, this was how wolf people were playing then – but things change – don’t they? Flautist Harris is no longer a member of the band and as a four piece they’ve been coming along in leaps and bounds. I’ve staggered home from their shows more than once recently thinking we’ve finally found the true heirs to the early Man legacy! In September the band returns to Wales to the Dolwilym mansion grounds in Camarthenshire to record its first album –on this evidence, I’ve a feeling the best is yet to come. (Nigel Cross)